Cultural Genocide

In 1944, Raphael Lemkin created the term "genocide", defining it as “a coordinated strategy to destroy a group of people, a process that could be accomplished through total annihilation as well as strategies that eliminate key elements of the group's basic existence, including language, culture, and economic infrastructure. [0]”

I don't know the history of my people.  We seek fragments here and there, guesses based on hints in what documents have survived systemic cover-ups [1].  We were not the subject of academic research, except in the pursuit of a method to eliminate our kind [2].

I have not inherited the traditions of my people.  Our stories are re-written with other people in our roles, taking credit for our accomplishments [3].  Our rituals and celebrations are ridiculed and outlawed [4, 5].

I do not get to see examples of people like me living happily ever after.  We're the ones who are are disappeared, forced to pretend to be something we're not to blend in, snatched away and hidden in mental institutions designed to "cure" us by slowly killing us, murdered and filed away under another name and identity. [6]

From birth I was told "You do not exist. There are no words apart from slurs for people like you. You have no community. There is no place for you in our schools and workplaces."  Strategies that "eliminate key elements of the group's basic existence, including language, culture, and economic infrastructure.”

Forgive me if I don't see this as a matter of "personality differences". [7]

~

[0] Genocide

[1] The history gets fuzzy a few decades before the present.  Perhaps scholars may find a few hidden source documents from earlier than that, but most likely family and friends burned any secrets that they didn't want lingering to tarnish their names.  History of Transgender People in the USA

[2] Reparative Therapy

[3] Response to Stonewall Movie

[4] Trans Stereotypes in the Media

[5] History of Laws Against Cross-Dressing

[6] You google it. I've already seen too much of this in one lifetime.

[7] I realize any number of black/indigenous/latina, disabled, etc people could have written a similar post that would indict my whiteness, and I don't deny that one bit.